Intelligence & Surveillance
Just Security’s expert authors provide legal and policy analysis of intelligence and surveillance activities, focusing on their impact on national security and on civil liberties and privacy rights, and their oversight by Congress and the courts.
1,837 Articles

Trump’s Islamophobic Record Provides Backdrop for New Counterterrorism Policies
Every one of the 10 airports targeted by the new “laptop ban,” issued last week by the Department of Homeland Security, is located in a Muslim-majority country. Unsurprisingly,…

Reforming Surveillance In the Age of Donald Trump
Above: An NSA site in Germany. On Wednesday, the Republican chair of the House Intelligence Committee, Devin Nunes (R-CA), gave a press conference in which he reported that Trump…

Incidental Collection Is Extremely Troubling, Regardless of Legality
A lot of ink has been spilled over statements by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Nunes that President Trump’s communications were incidentally collected pursuant to a surveillance…

Drawing a Line on Mass Surveillance: How Congress Must Reform Section 702
RAF Menwith Hill in the United Kingdom, host to U.S. National Security Agency facilities. On Monday, members of the House Intelligence Committee held an open hearing into Russian…

Preventing an Aerial Panopticon Over American Cities
A Defense Department slide showing the development of aerial surveillance systems. The following is an abbreviated version of “Preventing an Air Panopticon: A Proposal for Reasonable…

NYPD Muslim Surveillance Settlement a Victory for New Yorkers, but Vigilance Still Needed
Just a day before courts blocked President Donald Trump’s second “Muslim ban,” a judge in New York City formally approved a joint settlement in two lawsuits challenging…

What We Learned From the Comey Hearing
You can break down the news from Monday’s hearing with FBI Director James Comey into two categories: 1) Big things we already knew but needed confirmed 2) Smaller, but previously…

At Outset of Comey Hearing, Schiff Provides Russia-Trump Timeline
If you’ve been tracking the Russia story closely, nothing Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said during his 15-minute-long opening statement Monday came as a surprise, but the…

Will Election Hacking Split NATO?
NATO’s Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe, General Sir Adrian Bradshaw, has reportedly suggested that NATO may consider Russian interference in upcoming European elections…

Encryption Backdoors, Vault 7, and the Jurassic Park Rule of Internet Security
Surely without a hint of irony, just a day after WikiLeaks dumped a vault-load of documents detailing the Central Intelligence Agency’s use of hacking tools and software exploits,…
A Small Step Toward a Better House of Representatives
Today the Committee on House Administration took a small but important step to restore the House of Representatives as an effective legislative and oversight body. It voted unanimously…

One from the Vault 7: Wikileaks and the CIA’s Hacking Arsenal
It’s a cliche of political scandals that “the coverup is worse than the crime”: Attempts to conceal misconduct, because they’re easier to prove and provide…